Sweet Briar College is rated within the top 33% of four-year colleges nationally and earns a CollegeSimply grade of 7 out of 10. Learn how ratings are calculated
Reviews
If you are a student, former student, faculty member or parent, please help guide other prospective students by sharing your personal experiences at this college. What is it really like to go to Sweet Briar College?
The people in charge right now don't care about current students at all. They will show you the nicest rooms, the fancy riding center, and talk about how "sustainable" they are when you visit, but once they get your money they will make your life as hard as possible. The dorms rooms have mold, no hot water frequently, elevators that get stuck, and spotty heating. We don't have any professors, except the few recently graduated ones who have no idea how to teach and also don't listen to us. Somehow they make the worst financial decisions every year. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down again within five years.
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This college offers a fabulous academic environment. It has 3250 acres of rolling hills to hike and bike. Relax at the boathouse or scratch the noses of our sweet horses. The school offers small hands-on classes, accessible professors, and rigorous academics. Have a question in class? Ask it. Want to take a course in something completely outside your major? Go for it. (I took equestrian, organ, fencing, and art history). Students are leaders in everything inside and outside the classroom, and therefore graduate with strong leadership skills and a can-do attitude that will serve them in all walks of life. Our alumnae proved it in spring 2015! Socially, if you want a party, you can find it. I attended parties and formals with men from all our neighboring schools (Hampden Sydney, Washington & Lee, VMI, and even the U.S. Naval Academy). If you want a quiet night watching a movie with your friends, then you have that too. Socially, it is the best of both worlds! Utopia!
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As a parent, I would say campus safety was the top thing that made me feel at ease sending my first year 12 hours away from home. The campus is beautiful. The most gorgeous I have ever visited. The faculty and staff are wonderful. The are readily available. They appear to really love what they do, and genuinely care about the students. Many live on campus. One even brought his dog to class! My daughter loved the opportunity to do funded research her first year. The advantage of attending a women\'s college is that a female student can focus on her academics without facing discrimination. She can learn how to find her voice, and be a leader. The alumnae network is the most amazing I have seen. That is one of the things that impressed me about the women\'s colleges when my daughter first started looking at schools. Sweet Briar\'s alumnae are amazing. As far as the social scene, there doesn\'t appear to be any problem with dating. They seem to find their way to Hampden Sydney College.
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It\'s a small community. So the bar scene on campus is non-existent and the social life very different from that of a large university. However, many faculty and staff live on campus and the remainder very near - I had professors regularly invite us to their homes and keep office hours well into the night.\n\nThe bathroom situation - at least when I was there in 2007 - was far superior to most college dorms I visited. Communal bathrooms are never glamorous, but when your students are all women the water pressure is never lacking :D\n\nMy science courses had attendance in the single digits and more than once my lab experience was one-on-one with a professor. I got to know my classmates of all backgrounds and passions well (sometimes too well) and even years later we are still very much as close as we were when living across the hall.\n\nI cherish the memories of walking home by myself late at night from a study session or boathouse party without a single worry about my safety.
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Never before in my life have I been able to find a place that so completely accepts the individual that I am. I have personal connections with nearly every one of my faculty members. The friendships that I have fostered here at Sweet Briar are some of the nearest and dearest I have ever experienced. While many of my friends graduated with the class of 2015, I have no doubt that we will remain close, despite being states apart. As someone who visited SBC to prove that it was NOT what I wanted, I ask potential Vixens to put aside any notions you may have about Sweet Briar or women\'s colleges in general. SBC tends to be thought of as tons of rich, Lilly-wearing equestrians. I won\'t lie and say that there are not some of those. But I will also honestly and passionately inform you that not every SBC woman is this. We all come from different backgrounds, have different goals, and different interests. But one thing unifies us above all else: We are Sweet Briar women, ready for the world.
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